Shoutouts ya boi #beardcam.
Marketing your product – which in my case is myself – and self-promotion can be daunting concepts that are easily put in the too-hard basket. I’m certainly guilty of it. I usually tell myself something like:
“My music speaks for itself and once people hear it. it will take off.”
Unfortunately that’s not been my experience.. yet lol. It’s hard to know where to start with all the marketing and self promotion. Who to speak to, who to reach out to, who to market to.
This blog I thought I’d share my experiences around self-promotion, the birth of beardcam and some of the losses and wins along the way.
Quality self promotion
I was speaking with my good mate Gordon Burke recently about paying someone to do all my marketing. He gave me some pretty solid advice I think. He goes:
“Only pay someone to promote you when you can’t do it all yourself anymore. No one can market you like yourself Pete.”
Makes sense right.
Let me just take a moment to say that is by no means a blueprint to self -promotion or marketing 101. This is simply my experience and what has/hasn’t worked for me personally.
So lets talk about beardcam.
Beardcam beginnings
I remember one of my old beat-makers asking me who I was referring to when I’d say:
Shoutouts to ya boi!
It all links into beardcam so let me tell the story.
It was Rah! Records 1st birthday at Bed Bar in Glebe and I was emceeing the night. A star studded line up of the undergrounds finest were on display. It was such a dope night.
Every time I’d get the mic I’d go:
Shoutouts for everyone coming through tonight. Shoutouts to GhostAttack and the Sydney underground, shoutouts to Bed Bar and shoutout to ya boi Prim!
People were laughing at this shameless self promotion and it caught on.
Not long after that spectacular night, I was doing my Facebook story in the morning before work. It was a windy day and my beard was flying all over the place. My boi GhostAttack saw the story and commented:
“That looks like beardcam!”
And just like that, Beardcam was born.
Give us some background prim
I think the fact that I did door to door sales for 2.5 years on a commission only basis taught me a lot about brand awareness and the impact people have on people. It taught me many other things as well but that’s for another blog.
Now with Primitive, I can use my skills to market myself. It helps that I have an outgoing personality and a dope logo.. coupled with the fact Primitive is a cool name.
I’m not going to go around door to door selling my merch or anything.. well not yet anyway.
So shoutouts to ya boi Primitive, hashtag beardcam. That’s my shit. People seem to like it.. and I find it fun to speak about myself in 3rd person.
Just wanted to speak quickly about promoting tracks or videos for a release. When I released my debut rap video Madman, I decided to do a 10 day countdown on my socials.
I don’t know if it worked on others but I got so caught up in the anticipation.
I think because it was my debut that people really jumped on board for it. Still to this day it is by far my most popular song.
I’ve released tracks with like 2 days notice as an experiment to see if the views/attention it receives goes up or down. It goes down. A lot.
If I have a future date for a release, hype the shit out of it and do a countdown, it usually doubles in views. Like I said, it may not be the same for everyone but for me and my reach, a well-marketed hyped up track goes a lot further in terms of views.
I also DM my peeps a lot. Either with new music or sometimes I’ll even ask them if they want to purchase some merch. Lol. It may seem a bit forward but if you don’t ask you don’t get right.
I guess I don’t know if people support my brand, music or just support me. It doesn’t really matter as it’s all the same for me at the end of the day. I still have no idea how to drastically expand my audience. I have started reaching out to community radio and getting some air time. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have emailed FBI Radio lol.
Whatever, it’s all love. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that it all comes back to the music. Making the best song I can and performing it the best I can. Big ups for everyone supporting me.
As always thanks for rocking with ya boi Prim.
#beardcam ghost 👻 should be charging royalties… Just another step on your journey. Marketing has become just another hustle.
The hustle don’t stop!